1. Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to apparatus and methods for controlled error injection in transceivers and other electronic circuitry.
2. Description of the Background Art
There is increasing interest in the use of high-speed serial data communication for exchange of data between electronic devices. There are many possible protocols for such high-speed serial interfaces. Some of these protocols may be industry-standard protocols. Other protocols may be custom-designed for particular systems.
Examples of industry-standard protocols include PCI Express® (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express), XAUI (X Attachment Unit Interface), sRIO (serial Rapid IO), and many others. PCI Express® is a point-to-point serial interface introduced by Intel Corporation of Santa Clara, Calif., and may be used, for example, as an expansion card interface for computer systems. XAUI is a multi-lane serial interface that has an aggregated bandwidth of 10 gigabits per second serial interface which may be used, for example, as a chip-to-module or chip-to-chip interface. sRIO is a high-performance packet-switched interface which is typically used for a cluster of multiple devices.
A protocol specifies various features of the communication system. A protocol may specify, for example: the data format; how many channels are used together to provide an overall communication link; at what speed a channel is operated; how errors are to be treated; and so forth. Error handling may be defined by a protocol using state diagrams which may be implemented as state machines in digital logic.
As data communication protocols grow in complexity and the requirement for robustness increases, validation of system level error handling becomes more difficult and problematic.